What Will Likud Do When It Comes to Power in Israel?

By Israel Shahak

(Washington Report editor's note: This article by Dr. Israel Shahak was written before the Nov. 4 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. That tragedy gives increased urgency to Dr. Shahak's warning that supporters of Middle East peace must plan for the likelihood of a Likud victory in Israel's next national election.)

Throughout the September ceremonies in Washington celebrating the peace process, commentators assumed that Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres would win the next Israeli election. But lately it has become increasingly likely in Israel that they will lose it, and that a right-wing coalition, headed by Likud and its leader, Benyamin Netanyahu, may soon come to power in Israel. Let me first examine the reasons for the remarkable obtuseness displayed by the administration of President Bill Clinton and by most of the U.S. media, and then try to predict the developments which may follow the fall of the Israeli Labor party from power.

The international contacts of the Israeli Labor party are enormous, whereas the contacts of the Israeli right are minuscule, except among the international Jewish communities. Consequently, the views of the Israeli Labor party and of its slightly more leftist partner, Meretz, are fairly well known to the informed U.S. public.

The Israeli right, by contrast, seems to have no better friends than the parochially minded and more extreme members of the organized Jewish communities in the U.S. Remarkably, the U.S. media do not usually report their views, even though they are expressed clearly and frequently in the American Jewish weekly press. Perhaps this is because the Israeli right seems less interested in U.S. media publicity than in soliciting financial support from its Jewish friends and in mobilizing them for the purpose of covert political influence in countries of their residence.

Under such conditions, the public image of the Israeli right is to a large extent shaped by their adversaries of the Labor party. After long years of carefully encouraging and studiously cultivating ignorance among the Western public about Israel and its civic consensus, the Israeli Labor party seems in the end to have communicated successfully to the U.S. public Labor's own fear of Israel's right-wing opposition. As a result, there is today in the world a widespread perception that further political ascendancy of the right in Israel can only mean contempt for international law, while the Israeli left has quite different policies. This perception has taken root despite the fact that it was the right which made the peace with Egypt, and in spite of Yitzhak Rabin's support for Ariel Sharon's cruelties during and after the siege of Beirut in 1982, to mention only two examples. Due to obfuscation of the historical record, world opinion is disregarding the fact that Labor's own contribution to Israel's military adventurism and domestic repression has been quite on a par with Likud's, and possibly has exceeded it.

Israeli voters' ideological attachments usually are quite stable.

Under such conditions we should not be surprised that neither the U.S. administration nor the general U.S. public, so far as it is interested in domestic Israeli affairs, perceives that for more than a year Labor's position in Israel has been slipping and that by October 1995 it can be said that its chances to win the next elections, due at the latest in November 1996, will be very slim. This is apparent in the many polls which are continuously published, in other surveys of public opinion, and by watching the mood of the public.

To understand the situation, it is necessary to realize the sharp differences between Israeli elections and the society in which they take place, and American elections and society.

In the first place, economic affairs such as employment or wage levels have little, if any, influence on Israeli voting patterns. Instead these are determined by the voters' ideological attachments. The latter usually are quite stable. On the whole they change only among the young, up to about the age of 25.

In spite of the large number of Israeli parties, detailed surveys have shown that the Israeli voters can be divided by their electoral preferences into just two blocs. One, called "the left," is composed of Labor, Meretz and the so-called Arab parties and presently is in power. The other bloc, called "the right," is composed of all the other parties, among which Likud is the largest. In terms of American politics, the names of the two blocs are misleading. In Israel a majority of those with higher incomes vote for "the left," while the poor among the Jews tend to vote for "the right." The two blocs are divided first by their attitude to Jewish religion and tradition, and second on the Palestinian issue considered in terms of Jewish tradition, as variously interpreted by the two blocs.

Religious Crises

There have been more Israeli government crises caused by religious issues than those caused by all other issues combined. Changes of voting patterns within each bloc are, among adults, possible to a limited extent, but crossings from one bloc to another are very rare.

Although voting preferences are mostly determined by ideology, there is also the problem, well-known in the U.S., of getting the poorer voters to the voting box. This is the purpose of the election campaign which, just as in the United States, costs a lot of money. But in Israel most of this money comes from Jews outside Israel, and mainly from American Jews. As a result of the increasing disapproval of wealthy, activist U.S. Jews toward the peace process, the Labor party is in grave financial difficulties, while Likud and, to an even greater extent, the Jewish religious settlers are overflowing with money.

Since about 1965 the electoral power of "the right" has been slowly but continuously growing, while "the left" is declining. This is disguised by the fact that some of "the left," such as the Meretz party, is becoming slightly more leftist in its views.

To overcome this tendency, the strategy Rabin employed to win the 1992 elections consisted of presenting Labor as more Likud-like than Likud itself, yet devoid of Likud's liabilities. The marginal victory of "the left" in 1992 (it got 61 of 120 seats in the Knesset) was largely due to Rabin presenting himself as the true successor of Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Within Israel Rabin and Peres still are presenting themselves as such on every conceivable occasion, but they no longer are believed. In fact, there is some credibility to this presentation since the principles of the Oslo I and Oslo II accords are similar to the autonomy Begin offered to the Palestinians in 1979-81, only worse.

Meanwhile, however, Likud and "the right" in general have moved much more to the right. In particular, the belief in the exclusive right of the Jews to the land of Israel, which unites Israeli right-wingers, has become much stronger among them.

Another factor presently dividing the two blocs is their attitude toward Yasser Arafat. He is becoming increasingly acceptable to "the left," particularly its hard core, and increasingly loathed by "the right."

Equally important is the fact that because of the defection of two Labor Knesset members to the right wing, "the left" now depends for its present 61-to-59 majority on two renegades from the extremely hawkish right-wing "Tzomet" party, Gonen Segev and AlexGoldfarb. They have been well-rewarded: Segev was appointed energy minister and Goldfarb deputy housing minister, but their names also have become synonymous with treachery and corruption.

The argument advanced by "the left" that these qualities are to be commended if they serve the peace process is not apt to be well-received by the young. Because of these defections "the right" plausibly can claim that the government's majority in the Knesset no longer represents the national will as shown by the elections, and demand new ones before there is any further advance in the peace process.

It is likely that those four considerations will turn out to be decisive on election day. It can also be presumed that Clinton's attempt to help Rabin win the elections by allowing Israel to use the current year's $2 billion in loan guarantees—which originally were supposed to be used for the absorption of immigrants—to cover up the Israeli budget deficit will not change the ideological preferences of the Israeli voters.

What Likud Will Do When It Takes Over

In speculating about what Likud may attempt to do once it is in power, it should be stated firmly that Netanyahu's views are different from the wild ravings of Jewish religious fanatics to which the U.S. media pay too much attention. In the first place, it can be assumed that his positions will be formally correct, and that internationally recognized agreements will not be repudiated. They were approved by the Knesset and it would be very damaging, and possibly illegal, for Likud to try to pass ex post facto legislation to overturn them.

But the Oslo and Cairo accords are full of "holes" which can easily be interpreted in Israel's favor (as "the right" sees it), instead of being interpreted in Arafat's favor, as Likud accuses Peres of doing. Nothing in those accords obliges Israel to negotiate further with Arafat if he first is denounced as "a terrorist" or as a "supporter of terror." It can be assumed that this is what Netanyahu would hasten to do while claiming that he is perfectly ready to negotiate with other, unspecified Palestinian leaders.

There also is nothing in the Oslo and Cairo accords to prevent Israel from vastly enlarging the existing settlements. Likud circles speak of settling 100,000 Jews in the West Bank during the first year of their rule. The actual number may be less, but there is no doubt that, contrary to the settling process which is done as surreptitiously as possible under Rabin, under Likud every increase of settlements will be given the maximum publicity.

Another measure likely to be implemented by Netanyahu is the right (given in the Oslo accords to the Israeli army) of "hot pursuit," which allows Israeli forces to enter the autonomous areas in case of any armed attack from within, or just "to pursue terrorists." At present, Hebrew press commentators say, Rabin is waiving this right in consideration of Arafat's prestige with his Palestinian followers.

There are many other measures which Israel is entitled to take under the accords, and which under Likud would be taken. There is no difficulty, therefore, in imagining the reaction of the Palestinians to these measures, and Likud's counter-reactions.

It can be further presumed that Likud policies will be supported in the U.S. Congress. The best commentators of the Hebrew press agree that Rabin failed during his September visit "to win the two battles," as the well-informed Avino'am Bar-Yosef put it in Ma'ariv of Oct. 5.

One of those "battles" was with the majority of organized U.S. Jews over their attitude toward Arafat. The other was Rabin's effort, in Bar-Yosef's words, "to discredit the U.S. Jews with Congress. However," writes Bar-Yosef, "Rabin forgot that the congressmen need not only the votes of the Jews but also their financial donations. If the average congressman has to choose between Rabin and Jewish financial donations, he will choose the latter."

In this context, recent polls in the United States show that the more an American Jew is concerned with Israel, the more he tends to oppose Rabin's policies. If Jewish influence, as the Hebrew press terms it, continues to prevail in Congress, Likud will be able to pursue its policies without much external criticism, except within the United Nations. In the era of Bosnia, every politician knows how little such criticism means.

Speaking for myself, I have opposed the Oslo process from the beginning, first of all on the grounds of justice. It was clear to me that this process is trying to set up an apartheid regime much worse than the South African apartheid at its worst and also worse than the present regime of Israeli conquest and direct military occupation. But, in contrast to the many political experts boasting of their pragmatism, I also was aware that in terms of what is possible in Israeli politics, the Oslo process just couldn't be carried out.

Two years ago it would have been difficult to explain this to non-Israelis. However, by now, at least within Israel, the bell tolls so loudly that it is entirely appropriate to discuss what may occur after the coming demise of the Oslo process.

Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and retired professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israeli League of Human and Civil Rights.